Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Great Backyard Birdcount: Feb 18-21, 2011

The Great Backyard Birdcount is an annual event in which birders count the birds in thier backyard (or while out birding) and report on the number of each species. This "citizen science" project, run by Cornell University, provides valuable information on bird population and migration.

Male Common Goldeneye trying to get the attention of a female

Mike returned to the area of the Palo Alto Baylands where he saw the female common goldeneye a few days prior. This time, he also saw a male trying to get the females attention.

It worked for a while, but soon another male goldeneye arrived. They got into a dispute over the female. Eventually, a canvasback duck came over and chased the males away and he pursued the female for a while.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Birding on Sand Hill Road In Palo Alto

Western Bluebird

Black Pheobe

Red-tailed Hawk

Mike had a little extra time after his conference and went birding on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, CA. While none of these photos are worth a million dollars, he thinks the new camera was a good investment. There are supposed to be vultures on Sand Hill Road, but he only saw a hawk.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Baylands Nature Preserve: Palo Alto, California

Female Common Goldeneye

Long-billed Curlew

Northern Shoveler

American Avocet

Another American Avocet

Mike took a business trip to Silicon Valley and had time to stop at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto. The highlight was a Common Goldeneye. We've seen them occasionally in NJ and once on Lake Nelson but never got a good photo before. A better camera helps but there's nothing like sunlight.

Jersey Birding Links

Birds at the Bird feeders

About us

For those of you visiting this site who do not know us, we thought we would offer a brief explanation of how it all happened. We have lived in several different states, including Connecticut, New Hampshire, California, Virginia, and New Jersey. The house we rented sits right on a small lake, so we initially saw lots of geese and some mallards, rather mundane yet enjoyable. There seemed to also be an abundance of woodpeckers, and we started putting suet out for them. Mike frequently gets up early, and while working from his desk in the window this past fall, he noticed something other than geese on the lake. At first it started with a Pied-billed grebe, and then we also saw briefly a Wood Duck or two, a few Ring-necked ducks, Bufflhead, and then the gorgeous Hooded Mergansers. Well, we’ve fed birds before at other homes, but we’ve never lived on water, and we were especially fascinated by the beauty of the Hooded Mergansers. We have two grown daughters and family sprinkled around the US, and we were constantly e-mailing them pictures of the birds and ducks, so we decided it would just be easier to put them up on the web to share. We are not real die-hard birders, and we have no formal photography training. We’re just a couple who is enjoying the birds and waterfowl of their own backyard and wanted to share them. So, you may find more professional pictures somewhere else, but we hope you enjoy our site as well.

We moved back to California in June 2012, and we've started a new blog, California Birds. Here are our most recent California photos.